What I’ve Been Learning — Feb 2022
Over at Taught by Humans, a big part of our ethos is our love of learning. Learning tech-related things, yes, but also just constantly learning news things and improving on what we already know. Each month we are going to give a short update on what we’ve been learning — here’s mine for February 2022.
February went by so quickly for me, as it always does after getting back into the routine of studying and working. It also brought with it, however, ten days of isolation while I struggled with — you guessed it — COVID-19. This time of quarantine, although a little lonely, gave me time to focus on myself and rediscover old passions of mine. In this month’s blog, I want to share with you some of what I have learnt both in this period and in the freedom that followed…
Film
What better way to spend ten days stuck in your bedroom than catching up on all the films I’ve been meaning to watch over the last few years and never had the spare time for?
Growing up, I always loved watching films. On every shopping trip, I would bring home a new DVD that caught my eye, or that a friend or family member had recommended. In quarantine, I have been able to rediscover this love of film as a medium of art, and enjoyed listening to the brilliant Mark Kermode on repeat. If you ever want to learn more about visual devices, good screenwriting or use of sound in film, Kermode’s insights are always incredibly perceptive and his reviews are always entertaining to listen to.
I particularly enjoyed the film ‘71', which follows Jack O’Connell as a young British soldier who is accidentally abandoned by his unit following a riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971. The film is incredibly immersive, and I would recommend it to anyone in the mood for two hours of very well-put-together action sequences and long periods of (pretty-near-unbearable) tension.
Marketing Events
As always, I have also been focused on improving my skills within my role at Taught By Humans. Recently, this has revolved around using social media as a tool for drawing traction with events.
There have been several events in and around Taught By Humans over the last month or so, and there are more to come. In order to make sure that the events we are part of, and especially the ones we lead, are successful, it is important to share the right information and reach the right number (and type) of people with it.
Advice from Laura — as well as Cath and Yas — has been incredibly helpful for this. I have also found a number of useful resources online that have been very informative, including this article from Eventbrite, and this article from Hootsuite. Some interesting takeaways from my research have been:
- Encouraging use of the Taught By Humans hashtag by attendees (or generating a new one specific to the event)
- Utilising countdowns on Instagram
- Creating summaries for those who couldn’t make the event.
Individual Responsibility and the Environment
As part of my degree at the University of Bristol, which for those of you that don’t know is in Philosophy, I have been learning a lot about the relationship between moral responsibility and environmental issues.
Although a heavy subject, it is immensely important to talk about, and many of the papers that I have read have produced inspiring and thought-provoking perspectives on environmental accountability. Who is responsible for issues surrounding climate change? What are we each individually responsible for? Can individuals be held accountable for issues relating to the environment?
One paper which I found to be particularly insightful is Ty Raterman’s ‘Bearing the Weight of the World’, which argues that we should not impose responsibilities on individuals to take actions such as driving electric cars, cutting out meat or flying less which are realistically only successful if adopted by the global population as a collective. Instead, the responsibility that each of us has lies in our efforts to collectivise; we each have a moral duty to become part of the collective, and adopt a role in that collective, that works towards environmental activism and global change. Maybe this perspective isn’t right, but I think it is an interesting way of viewing the problem, and sometimes changing your perspective or challenging your current point of view is the best way to learn.
We are always learning, and want to share our passion for learning (about everything, not just tech) in this monthly blog series
